Project leaflet – Y4L1
Learn more about Youth For Love's activities to prevent and combat school bullying and gender-based violence among teenagers.
Learn more about Youth For Love's activities to prevent and combat school bullying and gender-based violence among teenagers.
The analysis and preparation of the context are fundamental for the success of the educational intervention program. The following guide aims to provide schools and organizations involved in the educational and social sectors with a clear vision of all the procedures to be carried out in the preparatory phase of diagnosis.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a pervasive phenomenon that concerns especially - but not only - girls and women from all sectors of our society, regardless of their age, nationality, ethnicity, class, or cultural background. It takes place everywhere: at home, at work, in the street, in leisure and sports venues, online, and at school. Indeed, one in three women in the EU has experienced either physical and/or sexual violence during their life time since the age of 15. Adolescent students experience GBV at school as victims, as perpetrators, or as bystanders. Schools can be a severe distress to students who are psychologically, physically, cyberly shamed, harassed, bullied, assaulted, or abused. UNESCO estimated that around 246 million girls and boys are subjected to some form of GBV in and around schools every year at the global level. Yet, schools can and should be spaces where adolescent girls and boys feel safe because gender equality is fully promoted through prevention programmes and easy-accessible, child-sensitive, and confidential procedures to report, respond, and refer GBV cases are in place. Schools are indeed key actors to make gender inequality and GBV unacceptable among adolescents in strategic partnerships with key local stakeholders. Youth for Love is implemented within the legal and conceptual framework provided by the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (2011), known as the Istanbul Convention. The Iatter recognizes GBV as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination and, therefore, as a cause and a consequence of inequality between women and men. It also acknowledges the crucial role of schools in enhancing the promotion of equality between women and men; non-stereotyped gender roles; mutual respect; non-violent conflict resolution in interpersonal relationships; gender-based violence against women; the right to personal integrity, through teaching material adapted to the evolving capacity of learners, in formal curricula and at all levels of education (Art. 14). Youth for Love employs the following definitions of the Convention ratified by all project partners’ countries: “Violence against women is understood as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women and shall mean all acts of gender-based violence that result in, or are likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (Art. 3, a); “Gender-based violence against women shall mean violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” (Art. 3, d); “Women includes girls under the age of 18” (Art. 3, f); “Gender shall mean the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women and men” (Art. 3, c). Bullying is the most prevalent form of violence in schools, regularly affecting more than one in three students between the ages of 13 and 15 worldwide. It is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power that can